JACKSON, MI – Throughout the rich history of complaints about Michigan winters, I never previously heard the cry of alarm so common this year.

“There’s no place to put any more snow,” people say.

Space for snow has become a vanishing commodity, like potato salad at a family reunion.

From nature’s standpoint, our worry is unfounded.

Nature has plenty of room to put more snow. It could pile snow over the tops of houses and trees, until the weight creates a moving sheet of ice that slowly pushes our gardens and lawns into mounds called the Irish Hills.

Hey, it’s happened before.

Finding places to put snow during this relentlessly cold and snowy winter is a concern for humans who labor constantly to keep driveways and sidewalks clear.

Shovels, snow blowers, tractors with blades, and plows have created snow banks taller and more confining than any I recall for Jackson County. Entire lanes of traffic are disappearing in some places, and parking lots are obstacle courses splattered by towering piles of white.

Circumstances like these make people wonder if Jackson has broken any records for snowfall this winter.

The surprising answer is: No one knows.

Anyone who tells you how many inches of snow have fallen in Jackson – whether the information comes from a barber or a weather forecaster – really does not know.

The National Weather Service stopped keeping official snowfall totals for Jackson in 2001. Official statistics can be questioned and disputed, but without them no number can go into record books.

The only snow measurements available for Jackson are supplied by volunteer spotters, and measuring snow under any circumstances is not a precise or sophisticated science. This I learned three years ago from Robert J. Ruhf, a Western Michigan University professor and weather spotter.

“Preferably, you clear a spot. Then, after it snows, you go out with a ruler and measure,” Ruhf said.

High wind with snow, a distressingly common combination, can make accurate measurements nearly impossible, because snow drifts after hitting the ground, Ruhf said.

Without wind, snow can settle and compact on the ground, potentially shrinking 12 inches of new snow into 8 or 9 inches, Ruhf said.

In other words, even carefully meticulous measurements vary significantly depending on where and when they are taken.

An online commenter once summed up the situation best by saying, “The only meaningful measure to me is what I have to shovel out of my driveway.”

Well said, sir.

Scientists describe that total as “a lot” this winter in Jackson. They don’t know where we can put more snow, either.